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drag racing

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A form of motorcycle racing that doesn’t really ever get its proper time in the limelight, the hyper-niche of drag racing motorcycles is often overlooked in the two-wheeled world.

This means that in many cases, motorcycle drag racers have had to make do with what’s available to them, and for those who race in a Pro Street Bike class that requires a DOT tire, that has meant a world of compromises.

Dunlop hopes that is about to change though, as the tire-maker has just released its first purpose-built DOT drag racing tire for motorcycles, the Dunlop Dragmax.

Here’s an interesting video, and an interesting lesson in physics. Filling a tank with water, and then pressurizing it with air, François Gissy has made a drag racing trike that gets up to 160 mph with only power from the jet stream of water it produces.

This exercise in Newton’s third law of motion contains a considerable amount of force, accelerating Gissy and his rig to over 5gs, as it only takes half a second to go 0-60 on the track. It’s pretty impressive to watch.

Nicolas Petit has a way of inking motorcycle designs that we didn’t even know we wanted. First it was drawings of dustbin motorcycles, and now its his drag bike creation, which is based off the BMW R1200R.

BMW’s boxer-twin engine doesn’t lend itself to being a great platform for drag racing, but you have to admit that this is a handsome ride, even if it’s all show and no go.

With BMW filling every niche under the two-wheeled sun with its bikes though, we wouldn’t be that surprised to see the Germans follow-up with something similar to what the French designer has done here. After all, BMW Motorrad is rumored to be working on an XDiavel-killer, and then there’s…

KTM released the 2008 RC8 in extremely limited numbers. Worried that these early adopters might feel their exclusivity was at risk, is releasing a KTM RC8 R version for 2009….for those discerning buyers.

Well what do you do if you want an even more exclusive RC8? What if you want to run in the 9’s on the 1/4 mile? Oh, well then you’ll need to supercharge it. And that’s just what Lantto Racing, a Finnish drag racing team, has done. Read more, and watch a dyno-run after the break.